A Novel about a Good Person

$29.95 (Paper)

Set in a displaced persons’ camp in post-World War II Germany, sometime in 1946 or 1947, Emma Andiievska’s Novel about a Good Person is a brilliantly imaginative and boldly surrealist tale touching upon universal human values and the individual struggle of an ‘average person’ to save his/her soul in the context of the eternal battle between good and evil. On the one hand, the book deals with little known and understudied sociopolitical issues of the fate of post-World War II refugees from Eastern Europe, and, in particular, Ukraine. On the …

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About The Book

Set in a displaced persons’ camp in post-World War II Germany, sometime in 1946 or 1947, Emma Andiievska’s Novel about a Good Person is a brilliantly imaginative and boldly surrealist tale touching upon universal human values and the individual struggle of an ‘average person’ to save his/her soul in the context of the eternal battle between good and evil.

On the one hand, the book deals with little known and understudied sociopolitical issues of the fate of post-World War II refugees from Eastern Europe, and, in particular, Ukraine. On the other hand, through her fluid treatment of time and space (both in her construction of plots and on the level of language and literary technique), Andiievska creates a timeless “model of reality” in which all concrete (even mundane) events that she describes are transformed into symbolic phenomena, while the actions, experiences, and moral dilemmas of the novel’s protagonists become archetypally universal.

Translated by Olha Rudakevych; with an introduction by Marko Robert Stech.

About The Author

Emma Andiievska is a Ukrainian poetess, prose writer, and painter who lives in Munich, Germany. A highly original creative individuality, she is the author of almost 40 collections of verse, three novels, several books of short prose, and thousands of surrealist paintings. Andiievska was awarded the 2018 Shevchenko prize for Literature.